Composers

From the Old Testament Book of Lamentations 1:12: O vos omnes qui transitis per viam, attendite et videte:Si est dolor similis sicut dolor meus. Attendite, universi populi, et videte dolorem meum.Si est dolor similis sicut dolor meus. O all ye that pass by the way, attend and see:If there be any sorrow like to my

Looking for some music to bring me to a calmer place, I was reminded of Gabriella Smith’s Strobe. Simple rhythmic pulses, embedded in larger waves of shifting harmonies and dynamics, ground me in the cycles of pulse, breath, day and night, seasons.

My first encounter with Es ist genug (It is enough), the Lutheran hymn famously set by J. S. Bach, was in the Violin Concerto of Alban Berg. Berg built his twelve-tone row using the first four notes of the hymn, with its rising whole steps. Berg quoted Bach’s harmonization of the hymn in the second

Sometimes, things just work out.  I was a co-founder of an organization called the St. Louis Low Brass Collective around 2012. One of our missions was to commission new music for low brass every year and give the work its first performance. The first year, the board decided to award the commission to Kim Portnoy,

In some musical circles and in some eras, transcriptions have been disdained. The current trend in authentic performance practices for music of the Baroque era, for example, is difficult to replicate on some modern instruments. Another concern is that music from other cultures will be “culturally appropriated” if played by Western musicians on Western instruments.

We often find solace in music. I have often heard the famous Bach Air from the Orchestral Suite No. 3 or the Barber Adagio for Strings performed at gatherings of mourners. Today I was reminded of a choral work by Johannes Brahms, Geistliches Lied, op. 30, known in English-speaking areas as “Let Nothing Ever Grieve

In this short Life that only lasts an hour How much – how little – is within our power —Emily Dickinson Capturing the essence of Emily Dickinson’s pithy, penetrating poem, Ryan MacEvoy McCullough’s setting for voice and piano plays the ever-evolving variations of a life’s searching and inventing against the ostinato of that life’s essence.